Moberly boys defeat Harrisburg 70-38

Wednesday

Dec 5, 2012 at 4:00 PM

Chuck Embree, MI Sports Reporter

Relentless pressure defense, effective rebounding and a well-balanced scoring summed up a dominating 70-38 victory by the Moberly Spartans boys team Tuesday in its season home opener against Harrisburg.

The Spartans scored the first seven points of the outing and would go from a 15-9 first quarter lead into a healthy 34-13 cushion by intermission, and Harrisburg never could figure out what hit them.“I thought we guarded really well tonight. Our team did a nice job of executing our game plan. Assistant coach (Tony) Vestal did a nice job of scouting Harrisburg a couple of times and he knew what it was going to take to guard each one of their guys and we put that plan into practice tonight,” said Moberly varsity boys coach Mark Anderson. “I was happy to see how we were able to get the rebound and get out in transition and score a lot of points as well.”“We also did a very nice job getting to the defensive glass. Rebounding is a big key for us because of our lack of size. We know that will be true going in to most of our ball games so we work extra hard on that in practice. I thought we pretty much kept them to one shot and challenged them on most of the ones they had taken.”

The Spartans managed to jumpstart a running clock to be used in the fourth quarter when the lead grew to 58-25 as the period began.

Senior Daniel Collier led the way with 16 points scored. Sophomore J’Von Spiller had 11 points and junior Justin Connaway knocked down a couple of 3s to score 10 points.

Moberly’s Andrew Garrison scored all of his nine points in the first half. Rashaun Smith dumped in eight, Acie Seifert and Cameron Smith each scored four points, Chris Quinn and Tyler Huffman both had three while Devonte Robinson chipped in two points.